This course charts past and present artistic mediations of racial and ethnic experiences in the United States. These include paintings of the New Frontier and 19th century folk art, ranging across the Harlem Renaissance and New Deal photography, from Chicano murals and the art activism of the Civil Rights Movement, to the contemporary American reception of Chinese art and the digital spaces occupied by activist groups on the Internet. In the struggle to understand the relation between self and other, artists have critically engaged with the images that define our common sense of belonging – images that saturate the public sphere via mass media, advertising, textbooks, museums, and shopping malls. This engagement ranges from a rejection of stereotypes to their appropriation, from the discovery of alternative histories to the rewriting of dominant narratives, from concepts of difference to theories of diversity. While taking a close look at individual artists and movements, this class locates them within their respective contexts. We will discuss socio-political discourses, including essentialism, structuralism, postmodernism, and post-colonialism, and we will question the validity of such concepts as nationalism and identity in an era of global politics that celebrates the hybrid self. The ultimate goal of the course is to find ways of adequately imagining and imaging an American identity today. Note: This course fulfills the Race & Diversity (GD) requirement for students under GenEd and Studies in Race (RS) for students under Core.